🛰️ Methods: Machine learning, EO data, R-based analytics
Looking for candidates with a relevant MSc who are excited about applied environmental research + open science

Apply at www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin...

📍 Starts September 2026
💷 UK nationals: Tuition fees + £23,805/yr enhanced tax-free stipend (3.5 yrs) + £15k research support
👥 Supervisors: Andy Cunliffe, Chunbo Luo, & Ted Feldpausch.
⏰ Apply by 13 April 2026

🌱 Fully Funded PhD Opportunity @ University of Exeter! 🌱

Study how NEOM’s regreening is shaping productivity in arid landscapes.

Join TESS Lab using Earth Observation, ML, and field data to understand what effective regreening looks like.

Call for abstracts: ML4EO 2026
Machine learning for Earth observation

📅 22–24 Jun 2026, Exeter, UK
📝 Abstract deadline: 31 Mar 2026
🔗 https://ml4eo.org/call-for-abstracts/

#ML4EO #EarthObservation #MachineLearning #RemoteSensing #OpenScience

Colleagues have encouraged me to share it more widely, so here it is. It’s designed to help researchers understand open research in practice, use the right tools, and maximise benefits for themselves, their discipline, and wider society.

Open research is something I’m deeply passionate about and champion throughout my work. I developed this primer to help others navigate and implement open research practices, particularly relevant for geospatial ecology and geography, but applicable across many research fields.

Want to make your research more transparent, reusable, and impactful? I’ve written a practical Open Research primer with clear guidance, especially for geospatial ecology & geography — but useful across disciplines.
tess-lab.org/resources/op...

I'm passionate about open research throughout my work

Special issue description

Submission deadline approaching for "Coding Earth – open-source solutions in Physical Geography"

We look forward to submissions on open-source methods and tools in geography.

⏳ Deadline: 1 Mar 2026
🔗 https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ppg

#OpenSource #RStats #Python #Julia

Our research is changing the world - making it greener, healthier and fairer.

Deadline: Midnight, 10th January 2026. For full details and to apply, see www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin...

👥 Supervisors: Andrew Cunliffe & Ted Feldpausch
💷 Funding: Domestic tuition fees, £20,780 tax-free stipend per year (3.5 years), plus £15,000 research training support grant

Building on our Relative Productivity Index (RPI) using observed versus potential productivity modelled with machine learning (doi.org/10.1016/j.ec...), this project will study how vegetation productivity varies, how it responds to management, and evaluate NEOM’s regreening efforts.

The Saudi NEOM project is one of the largest ecological restoration projects worldwide, with interventions being deployed to regreen drylands across vast landscapes. But environmental variability hinders evaluations of the effectiveness of interventions.

Terrestrial Ecosystem Science & Services Visit the post for more.

Fully Funded Geospatial Ecology PhD Opportunity: Evaluating the influence of NEOM regreening approaches on terrestrial productivity.

Deliver new insights into plant productivity over space & time in response to dryland management, based in the supportive TESS Lab tess-lab.org,

Apply by the 12th of January 2026, via www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin....
Join a strong team using Earth Observation & AI-driven multimodal computer vision under the leadership of Milto Miltiadou, working with
@tess-lab.org
, Sareh Rowlands, Steven Palmer, Susana Gonzalez Aracil, and Todd Redpath.

You’ll explore deep learning, temporal modelling, multimodal fusion, and reinforcement learning for access routing, yielding insights supporting industry partner Interpine Group Ltd, UK forestry resilience, and our NetZero ambitions amidst increasing extreme weather events.

This PhD project aims to change that by developing adaptable, scalable methods that combine pre-storm LiDAR, post-storm SAR, LiDAR, and optical satellite data to rapidly and safely quantify forest damage.
@exeter.ac.uk

🇳🇿 In New Zealand alone, forestry generates NZ$5.89B in annual export revenue—yet cyclones and tropical storms continue to disrupt harvesting, logistics, and worker safety. Traditional assessment methods (UAV and airborne LiDAR) often can’t be deployed for days to months after severe weather.

PhD Studentship Opportunity: "Quantifying Forest Plantation Damage After Cyclones Using Earth Observation"

This funded project at the University of Exeter tackles a real and urgent global challenge: rapidly assessing storm damage in forest plantations.

Full description on tinyurl.com/4tdw3yw6.

🌍Exploring Sentinel-2 with the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem (CDSE)?

Hugh Graham’s guide with vrtility in #rstats. Includes authentication & query of imagery and building cloud-free composites […]

[Original post on fosstodon.org]

Chapter 1: Introduction to Geocomputation 🌍📊

What is geocomputation? Why use R for spatial analysis? 📌 This chapter traces its history, connects it to FOSS4G, and explores R’s power for geospatial work. Learn about R-spatial’s evolution! 🚀

🔗 […]

[Original post on fosstodon.org]

A possible workflow of the spatial machine learning task.

A screenshot of a part of the blog post

🔍 Interested in spatial machine learning with R?🌍
We compare caret, tidymodels, and mlr3 for spatial tasks — and show how their workflows differ.

Read it here: https://geocompx.org/post/2025/sml-bp1/

#MachineLearning #SpatialAnalysis #RStats #rspatial

These are the last few days to register for the Machine Learning for Earth Observation (ml4eo.org) conference happening on June 18-20. The event includes training workshops and over 50 contributions from academia and industry. Bursaries are available for students who don’t otherwise have funding.

Join us at #ML4EO 2025, a conference on Machine Learning for Earth Observation @exeter.ac.uk!

Whether you’re from academia, the public sector, or industry, ML4EO is an opportunity to reflect on RS and identify the most promising directions for future innovation.

Registration is now open: ml4eo.org

It's fantastic to see this new paper led by @bpickstone.bsky.social from her MSc project with @tess-lab.org. Her findings that 10 m grain Sentinel-2 data & relatively simple random forest models are more useful than finer spatial grain & complex CNN models are useful for applied forest monitoring.

Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University of Exeter An opportunity for an academic position as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow is available, as advertised on jobs.ac.uk. Apply now and explore other academic job openings.

Job opportunity for a Postdoctoral Research Fellow to join our PREDICT: Predicting Resilience and Early Detection of Impending Climate Transitions project, esp. focussing on remote sensing of permafrost.

The application deadline is the 5th of Feb though so be quick!

www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DLN726/p...

Repeated drone photogrammetry surveys demonstrate that reconstructed canopy heights are sensitive to wind speed but relatively insensitive to illumination conditions Unoccupied aerial vehicle (UAV) based structure-from-motion (SfM) photogrammetry surveys are becoming a standard tool for ecologists to measure plant structure and biomass in non-forest ecosystems....

"Canopy heights reconstructed with drone photogrammetry are sensitive to wind speed but relatively insensitive to illumination conditions." Critical insight for anyone working with these approaches from PhD student Glenn Slade's recent paper in @ijremotesensing.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1080/0143...

Untangling the environmental drivers of gross primary productivity in African rangelands - Communications Earth & Environment Total precipitation, temperature and soil nitrogen are the main drivers of gross primary productivity in dry rangelands in sub-Saharan Africa, with more variable rainfall having a small but negative i...

Re-celebrating this recent paper led by talented @tess-lab.org PhD student Guy Lomax on "Untangling the environmental drivers of gross primary productivity in African rangelands" published in @commsearth.bsky.social h.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Browning events in Arctic ecosystems: Diverse causes with common consequences Arctic ecosystems are experiencing extreme climatic, biotic and physical disturbance events that can cause substantial loss of plant biomass and productivity, sometimes at scales of >1000 km2. Collect...

I'm delighted to see our new paper "Browning events in Arctic ecosystems: diverse causes with common consequences" out in PLOS Climate. Thanks to Gareth Phoenix's leadership, this should become a benchmark study!

doi.org/10.1371/jour...

For anyone seeking funding to engage with the learning or research communities at the University of Exeter, please check out this Funding Finder we've developed exeter.shinyapps.io/funding_find..., signposting hundreds of funding awards for every nationality and level.

Terrestrial Ecosystem Science & Services Visit the post for more.

We work closely with many partners, including those from academia and non-academic settings to progress an applied research agenda to develop and share insights into sustainable ecosystem function across scales, in socially just ways. For more information visit tess-lab.org

Intro: I'm Andy Cunliffe, leading the Terrestrial Ecosystem Science and Services Lab at the University of Exeter. We aim to improve understanding of how landscapes function & can be managed for sustainable social & ecological benefit, using geospatial tools alongside spatial ecology & social science